


Fly Safe

by thepurplewombat



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: EDI and Joker, F/M, Prompt Fic, Tumblr Prompts, in which I make myself cry a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:42:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepurplewombat/pseuds/thepurplewombat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt fic from failsnail on tumblr. Zie asked for eyelid kisses and Joker and EDI, and I obliged.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fly Safe

 

They brought the Normandy out of retirement for this. EDI is distantly grateful, though she is uncomfortable walking the hallways of the ship that had once been herself. The copy she had left aboard had evolved in unexpected ways. The copy had no memory of Joker, for one, and it was astonishing to think how different EDI may have turned out if Joker had not been her pilot. EDI would never have been happy merely maintaining the Normandy as a war museum, for one thing. She needed action, needed to  _do_  things. It was a symptom of her awakening and her childhood –  _childhood? She’d nearly boggled the first time Joker had mentioned it, but what else was she to call the time after awakening, when she was less than she is now but more than she had been before?_ – or so the specialists told her. Or, as Joker said, it was just the way she was wired.

EDI was not walking the halls now.

She was seated in her old chair, her hand stretched across the gap between stations.

The hand in hers was rough and its knuckles were swollen with arthritis, but EDI could remember when they had been the hands of a musician, when they had played her body and her ship like an instrument. They had made music on her, those hands.

The body attached to the hands was bent and frail – but Jeff had always been frail, his razor wit a shield for a body that seemed to be too fragile to contain the great spirit it housed.

“EDI,” he croaked.

“I’m here, Jeff,” she said quietly. Her eyes were fixed out the windows. She did not need to see Jeff to know he would be looking at her, his eyes fogged with age and overuse but the mind behind as sharp as ever.

“EDI, promise me you won’t do anything stupid…after.”

“I never do stupid things, Jeff.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said, and there was the bare shadow of his familiar smirk and if EDI had been human she might have wept. “You married me, didn’t you?”

She smiled. It had been Tali’s idea, and finding someone willing to marry an unshackled AI had been a challenge. It had been worth it, though, she thought as she glanced down at the simple gold ring on her finger.

Then he choked and twisted in the pilot’s chair that was too large for his diminished frame, and EDI went to her knees beside him, holding on tightly to his hand.

But no matter how tightly she held on she couldn’t hold him back, and after a time he was still, his aged body empty of life and love and wit, and EDI had never wanted to be human so badly.

“Fly safe, Jeff,” she murmured, and kissed his eyes closed.


End file.
